Ramana, If You're My Guru, Give Me a Sign

I arrived in Tiruvannamalai on January 2nd.

I had been in Tiruvannamalai for three weeks before I asked the right question.

For those three weeks, I floated along, hesitant about my direction. I thought I had come to Tiru to see a spiritual figure I’d read a little about online, someone well-known in the Tiru scene. But as soon as I entered the hall where Satsang was presented and she arrived, I knew.

Categorically not it.

I wanted to leave immediately but I was stuck at the front of the room. I chose patience and waited until I could quietly exit.

Back at my accommodation, I felt flat.

Why was I even here?

I had dropped into the Ramana ashram a few times, and once or twice I’d felt this wave, pure bliss, wash over me in the main hall. It was subtle, but unmistakable. Something was calling me there.

Around the same time, I met a really nice devotee of Sathya Sai Baba at the chai stand opposite the ashram. We had an interesting conversation.

He told me that he was a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba and I shared with him some of my dream experiences involving Sathya Sai Baba and Nisargadatta Maharaj.

He looked at me and said, without hesitation:

“You have a strong connection to God. If these beings are taking interest in you, there’s something going on. You need to focus. You’ve been distracted. You must do it.”

I thanked him for his honesty and took his words seriously.

I did feel a strong connection to God… I just didn’t know what I needed to do with it.

We spoke about relationships. He told me he had chosen the spiritual path and had been celibate since the 90s. I told him I didn’t see a conflict between family and the spiritual life having a family was my deepest desire.

He said that back in the 90s, during a visit to Puttaparthi, he had noticed a woman around the ashram and felt a pull. At the same time, he was called in for a personal interview with Sathya Sai Baba.

During the interview, Swami asked him what he wanted.

He replied, “I want you.”

Swami looked at him and asked again,

“Are you sure? Is that all you want?”

And he said, “Yes.”

That was it.

He knew in that moment, everything had crystallised. He could either follow the path of family life or remain celibate and give everything to the spiritual path.

In Swami’s presence, he made the decision.

He chose the spiritual life. And he never looked back.

I was intrigued. I liked his energy. He spoke truth.

Before we parted, he told me, “Your time in Tiru is about to go in one direction or the other.”

I sat with it.

And accepted it.

I needed to stop resisting.

So I asked.

I sat down in meditation and asked directly:

"Ramana, if you’re my guru, give me a sign."

And then I let it go. No clinging, no expectation.

The very next morning, I woke at 4 AM, eyes wide open.

I didn’t even feel like I was waking up. It was like I had been switched on.

I felt pulled. Led.

The gates were already open when I arrived. I went inside and sat down quietly, listening to the chanting that had begun at 5:45 AM.

This became a rhythm. I began going early, before the sun rose, just to sit in silence in the shrine hall. Something was happening, but I didn’t understand it yet.

Then, one morning, I was deep in meditation when I had a vision.

A beautiful Indian woman appeared to me, gazing at me with a compassion so immense, it filled the space. She was smiling gently, no teeth, just that serene, knowing smile.

Her bindi glowed bright red against a hazy black and red background.

I opened my eyes, stunned.

Who was she?

A week later, I was flipping through a book on the shelf in my room when I saw her photo.

It was black and white, and she didn’t look quite the same, but I knew.

It was her.

Her name was Echammal.

Her beauty in the vision had been beyond the photo, luminous, spiritual, alive.

She had revealed herself to me.

But why?

I didn’t know. I still don’t fully.

I kept returning to the hall, every morning. Silent.

Until one afternoon it happened.

It was around 2 PM.

I was deep in meditation, blissing out.

It felt like I was drunk, but it wasn’t alcohol, it was love.

I opened my eyes, barely able to focus, and looked across the hall.

There he was Ramana in the photo near the entrance on the women’s side.

His eyes locked with mine.

And I froze.

Not in fear.

In love.

My body was trembling, flooded with presence.

I couldn’t move for at least 15 seconds.

And in that silence, that stillness, I knew:

I had found my Guru.

Not when I was curious.

Not when I was searching.

Only when I was ready.

I still didn’t understand what devotion to the Guru really meant.

But I would.

Three months later.

“Lakshmiammal of Mandakolathur, known at the Brahmasram as Echammal, is one of the oldest devotees of the Swami. She had very early in life drained the cup of bitterness to the dregs. Before she was twenty‑five she lost her husband, then her only son, and finally her only daughter, in quick succession. Life became unendurable…

So in 1906 … she went with a friend up the hill and saw the Swami. The Swami sat quiet and said nothing. She stood for an hour in his presence and said nothing at all. Yet though no words were exchanged—wonder of wonders!—she felt transfixed to the spot and could not think of leaving the Ashram. She returned to her friend’s house at the foot of the hill and informed her that … by the grace of that Swami, the incubus of sorrow had been lifted from her heart.

She repeated her visits to the Ashram day after day, and in a few days she could talk of her departed children and recall facts associated with them without being overwhelmed by tears, and without even a bitter pang in her heart. How did this dense cloud of sorrow… give place to a comparative calm in her breast? She could not understand — it was all his grace.”

— B. V. Narasimha Swami, Self-Realisation: The Life & Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, Chapter XII: “Echammal”, pp. 101–102 (5th Edition, 1967)